


The Beautiful World That You'll See

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Lullaby for a Stormy Night - Vienna Teng (Song), TENG Vienna - Works
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Found Family, Gen, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 11:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11012214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: Come sit with me, little one.  We’ll wait the storm out here.





	The Beautiful World That You'll See

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/gifts).



> Jukebox 2017 fic for Katherine. Title poached from the song lyrics. Many thank yous to my beta Jadesfire!

The ion storm formed seemingly out of nowhere.

Kel had been watching the outer hull monitors in the ship cockpit, when she felt a crackle of energy under her fingertips. Surprised, she jerked her fingers off the controls.

“What’s happening?” Kel asked.

Glo, the AI pilot, didn’t even turn around to look at her. “Looks like we got us an ion storm,” Glo said. “Hold on.”

Within seconds the storm engulfed the craft, rocking it off-kilter briefly before the ship stabilizers righted it again. Kel flinched at another crackle of electric discharge along the ship’s controls.

Glo peered at her, puzzled. “Come on, Kel, it’s just an ion storm.”

The light-show of purple, pink and green ion plasma through the ship view screen was fantastic, but unnerving in its silence. “Won’t the energy focus and wear through, start punching holes in the bulkhead?” Kel asked.

“Nah, this hull’s too thick for that. We’re still well within safety specs. If the charge gets too bad I’ll turn on the force shield to dissipate it.” Glo blinked their row of visual sensors at her. “This isn’t your first day in space, Kel.”

“No, but it’s my first time awake during a space storm.”

Glo waved their filaments about. “I suppose. So do you wanna go down below then, check on the cargo? Make sure it’s secure in case I have to initiate defensive manoeuvres?”

Kel sighed. A gentle dismissal was still a dismissal. The cargo most definitely did not need checking, but Glo was trying to be mindful about doing their job, and probably (no, most definitely) did not want Kel’s distraction. “Sure.”

“And get Mir to help you. That unit needs more verbal interaction.”

“Of course.” Kel climbed down from the cockpit level to the corridor below.

~~~~~

Kel’s rubber-soled footsteps thudded on the metal walkway as she made her way to the centre of the ship. She moved slower than usual, keeping her eyes open for movement, because Mir was, as yet, nowhere to be seen. The little AI was likely huddling somewhere, probably squeezed into a vent. At least until the static electricity in the walls built up enough charge to shock her out of her hiding place and into the open.

“Mir? Mir, where are you?” she called softly, so as not to startle her.

She had almost reached the cargo hold when she heard an almost-human squeal. _There we are._ A small, rotund shape, about the size of a basketball, barrelled towards her from a chest-high air vent on the opposite side of the corridor.

Kel instinctively thrust her arms out to catch Mir. Her hands closed around the AI just before she passed out of her reach. Mir squealed and whirred, trying to break free of Kel’s clutches.

“Whoa there, little one,” Kel said, “it’s just me.”

Mir struggled for a few seconds more, then quieted. She rotated the upper half of her body until her line of visual sensors met Kel’s eyes. Kel grinned.

“Hi, Mir. How are ya?”

Mir flickered back in recognition and greeting.

“Glo says we’re to check out and secure the cargo hold. Let’s go.”

She’d taken maybe five steps when the ship tilted suddenly, sending Kel off-balance. She fell, landing hard on one knee on the walkway grating. “Damn it!”

Her hold on Mir slackened; Mir wriggled free and hovered nearby. Glo’s disembodied voice surged through the ship speakers.

“You find Mir yet?”

Kel struggled to keep the pain out of her voice. “Yeah, just did. What was that?”

“Discharge knocked out a stabilizer. No biggie. There’s gonna be more turbulence coming though. Get in the hold soon as you can.”

“Okay.”

Kel rose, wincing, and pressed against a bulkhead for support. Except she forgot the walls carried a slight static charge, which earned her a tiny but painful jolt when her bare hand hovered over the metal. 

“Ouch!”

She slid along the wall to the door of the hold, dragging her injured leg behind her. She touched her other hand to the wall briefly to relieve any remaining static, then passed her palm over the sensor. The door slid open; Mir flew in, Kel limping after.

Kel collapsed on the floor, against one of the empty stasis pods in the middle of the hold. Mir hovered above her.

“Come sit with me, little one,” Kel said, and patted the floor beside her. “We’ll wait the storm out here.”

~~~~~

The ship builders had placed the hold at the exact centre of the ship, the safest, strongest, and most-reinforced area of the craft. Rows upon rows of storage units lined the walls, stacked floor to ceiling, stocked with everything survivors might need to eke out subsistence. And the survivors themselves, slept in suspended animation in banks in the centre of the hold, representatives of as many surviving Earth species as they could gather in the final months. Freeze-dried microbes. Seeds for plants. Embryos for animals, including humans.

The engineers designed the hold’s life-support systems to withstand as much damage as might be caused by a years-long sojourn through space. But the Earth’s temperature shot up to lethal levels before they finished their tests. They’d thought they had decades before Earth grew uninhabitable. They’d had only months.

Kel wasn’t sure – might never know – how many, if any, organisms would survive the trip.

Twelve such lifeboats launched from Earth in its final days of existence, in twelve different directions, towards star systems with planets that might prove habitable. Kel sometimes wondered how the other ships were faring. Had they had reached new homes or had they all succumbed? Glo kept trying to raise communications, but never received anything back but static on each ship’s frequency.

Kel herself had been revived from stasis three Earth-years ago – sorry, she corrected herself in Glo’s drawl, three solar-equivalent cycles – when the previous human chaperone had expired. Ship regulations required at least one adult Earth-born human remain conscious through the whole journey, as chaperone and ambassador if they encountered other space-faring entities. Kel had volunteered as chaperone, along with eleven others.

The trip had been more arduous than anyone had conceived. Kel – indeed, most of the chaperones – had expected to be revived on the planet the AIs selected for them. Instead she found herself the last Earth-born adult human remaining on board. The first chaperone, who had started the journey from Earth, survived only half a cycle before succumbing to advanced radiation sickness. After him, five of the adult stasis pods had malfunctioned. Three didn’t last the revival process. The two chaperones before her had survived thirty-three and twenty-one cycles respectively. 

The trip itself was designed to use minimal resources. The crew complement was limited to one human chaperone and one AI who was wired into the ship controls as pilot. On this ship, that was Glo. The other AIs were to be brought online as planet-fall moved from possibility to probability. The chaperone in current service would train the remaining AIs in stages.

But in almost fifty-eight cycles they’d found nothing suitable for Earth species habitation.

And Glo had made it clear, when Kel woke up, that unless they found an Earth-compatible planet within the next twenty to thirty cycles, Kel would likely not survive to reach planet-fall either. Kel always tried not to think about any possibility but reaching the planet where they would eventually settle. In the meantime, Kel and Glo had decided to ramp up the AI advancement early in preparation. Just in case.

~~~~~

Even in the centre of the cargo hold, Kel felt the ship list and roll with the ion winds. Poor little Mir positively vibrated beside her, as if torn between wanting to scurry to the closest vent, but not wanting to leave Kel’s side either.

Let’s just get Mir through this storm, Kel thought.

“Are you scared, Mir?” Kel asked.

Mir edged closer to Kel until she pressed up against her side. Like a child, Kel thought. Mir was the first AI Kel had activated, and was still in her training stage. Mir was to replicate human psycho-social development as closely as possible. Kel hadn’t initiated Mir’s vocal subroutines yet, so Mir could learn non-verbal communication. It would be at least another half a cycle before Kel would bring Mir’s speech programming online.

The ship shuddered around them; reflexively she placed her arm around the AI. Here I am, comforting a ball of circuitry, she thought. Yet, Kel felt calmer for it. And the warmth of Mir helped distract her from the shooting pain in her kneecap, which had to be a plus.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Kel added. “Storms can be really scary. This is your first space storm too, isn’t it?”

Mir bobbed her agreement.

“Yeah. But, you know, we humans used to have electric storms on Earth too, Mir? We called them thunderstorms. You know what a static discharge is, right?”

Mir fluttered her filaments.

“Of course you do. You just got zapped by one.” She set Mir on her good thigh, her hands gesturing wildly. “So imagine, this puffy layer of water vapour in the sky, we called them clouds. And all these columns of warm moist air in the clouds, zipping up through the surrounding cold air, like building a tower. The columns rub against all the air and water molecules on the way to the top, long enough and fast enough to create a giant FLASH! of electricity. That’s the lightning, Mir. And the flash is so hot the surrounding air expands at the speed of sound and goes BOOM.” Kel spread her arms out wide. “That’s the thunder.”

Mir chirruped a sound that Kel translated as a laugh.

“And then imagine how it would rain. All that water vapour in the air would condense into droplets and fall through the clouds, grow bigger and bigger and bigger, then, plip-plip-plip-plip-PLOP! Millions, zillions of drops on the ground landing at once.

“And sometimes the drops would freeze and fall as hail. Sometimes the size of peas. My grandma said the hail used to grow as large as my fists. Big enough to break windows and snap tree branches. But you won’t know what those look like, will you. Not til I plug you into the knowledge bank.”

Kel shrugged. “I used to be so scared of thunder when I was a kid. It was always so loud, you know? It roared. Especially when the storm was overhead at night and it woke me up. Never knew I really had to be afraid of the lightning.”

Mir waggled a single filament.

“But I guess now it’s ion storms in space to be scared of, eh Mir? Still, things could be worse.” 

She fell silent for a minute, listening to the ship engines and the faint tingles of energy surging through the corridors outside the hold.

“I miss the rumble of thunder,” Kel said. “It’s just not the same in a vacuum. The colours are pretty, but it’s all light. Not enough molecules in space to generate sound waves.” She sighed.

“Do you think there’ll be thunderstorms on the planet we eventually land on, Mir? I hope so. Or something like them. Maybe one day you and I will get to sit on a porch with our feet up and watch the storm pass.”

The ship slowly began to right itself under them. Kel rolled up her jumpsuit leg to inspect her kneecap. The imprint of the grating welled red against a growing purple bloom on her skin.

“Oh, that’s gonna bruise up nasty,” she said. “At least it’s not broken. I hope.” Kel set Mir down on the floor. Slowly she raised herself to standing, tried to bear weight. Her knee complained, but she mostly managed. “Well, I think I can walk.”

Glo’s voice called over the comm system. “Storm’s over, everybody. Any injuries or cargo damage on your end?”

“My knee when the ship tilted. Cargo’s safe and secure.”

“Good. And Mir?”

“Just scared. But doing better now I think. How’s it up top?”

“Eh, nothing that can’t be fixed. Go get your knee scanned, and send Mir up here to help with repairs. Glo out.”

Kel patted Mir above her visual sensors. “Okay, you heard the boss. You’re needed in the cockpit. Go. Scoot.”

Mir shook her body and bobbed at Kel’s knee.

“You want to come with me to the infirmary first? All right. Then you go up to help Glo.”

Kel limped out of the cargo hold, Mir floating contentedly beside her.

~~~~~

The ions in the surrounding atmosphere begin to dance a merry path along Mir’s exposed integument as she repairs an irrigation panel in the agricultural centre. An electric storm is brewing, she thinks with a spark of excitement. At last.

This planet is not especially prone to them, but they are spectacular when they arrive. When they do, she always takes the time from her duties to watch. She sets down her tools and begins to make her way toward the exit hatch.

A faraway flash of white-purple static discharge illuminates the indigo sky through several of the portals. Five micro-cycles later, she pauses at the rumble in the distance. A long-ago conversation, old words rise from the depths of her memory. _Lightning. Thunder. Rain._

Maybe there will be _hail_. She cannot wait.

The storm moves ever closer, building speed and strength. Mir’s own anticipation builds. She reaches the entrance portal and prepares to step outside into the approaching chaos. She opens the hatch and is just about to exit the dome when a voice pipes up behind her.

“Where are you going?”

Mir stops, recognizing the youngest and as yet unnamed AI, but does not turn around. “To watch the thunderstorm.”

“Glo says we’re not supposed to go outside during electric storms. They can disrupt our circuitry.”

Mir allows herself a smile. Of course Glo would say that. “Only if you’re careless,” she replies. Mir then turns to face her tiny inquisitor. “Would you like to sit outside with me, little one? I would like the company.”

The small AI’s visual sensors blink at Mir. “I’m scared of electric storms.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Mir assures her companion. She picks up a sheet of insulation and holds it out. “You’ll be safe with me, I promise.”

The AI levitates from the floor, and Mir wraps the insulation firmly around like a blanket, leaving only the sensors visible. She then tucks the AI against her and goes outside the dome towards a low-slung wooden bench, where she settles down, balancing the newest AI in front of her.

The darkening sky splits wide open with a fresh white bolt of lightning. Thunder follows just two micro-cycles later. The boom is so loud that the AI jumps and even Mir flinches. The AI nudges closer.

“Why do you watch these electric storms, Mir?”

Mir sighed. “Because Kel liked to watch them once upon a time.”

“Who’s Kel?”

Another flash of light zigzags through the cloud layer. Mir waits for the thunderclap to pass before she answers. “My friend, little one, from many cycles ago, when I wasn’t very much older than you. We travelled together with Glo on the ship.”

The downburst of precipitation begins. Drops of liquid water bounce off the dome in a dull rat-a-tat drumbeat. Mir deems it a sufficient amount to replenish the agricultural cisterns. When the first crop comes in, they will be able to resuscitate some of the non-human embryos in storage, the next step in rebuilding.

“Kel was one of the humans.”

“Yes. The last of the Earth-born chaperones.” Kel had expired mere milli-cycles after they reached this planet: eighty-five cycles after they’d left Earth, thirty cycles after she’d been revived on the craft. Mir took comfort in that Kel had lived long enough to see this world, even if she did not get to observe its storms.

“So you watch to remember Kel.”

Mir nods. “Yes. And now, little one, let me tell you the story of my first ion storm.”


End file.
